


of the always puzzle of living and doing

by farnear



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/M, M/M, Season 1, Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 21:38:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9091765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farnear/pseuds/farnear
Summary: He knows how to play a song on a guitar, and how to skip a stone on a lake so it never falls, and how to skate, and how to kiss a girl. He knows how to make runny noodles and how to piece a puzzle. He doesn’t know what to do here.





	1. a dreaming house

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote it in two days and edited in the next two, should probably take more time with it but i can't stand to wait. the title is a line from e.e. cummings' You Are Tired (I Think) which is a rather 2012 choice to make, but i feel it works. also, jonas in season 1 had - some problems - which this fic reflects. he does have some questionable ideas about how people & life are, as most fifteen years olds are wont to do.

The ground is hard below his back, and tears well up in the corners of his eyes, the air cold and dry, carrying the scent of damp autumn leaves. He is watching the steam curl away and realizes it is his breath, and then he is watching the frozen sky crowned by narrow branches, the trees closing on the patch of old grass they chose to lie on. They brought a basket and a rug, as if it were a picnic. Wholesome. It is, save for the weed. They chose the patch of grass, and they unfolded the rug, and they took the weed out of the basket. As they lied down, the joint lit and passed, Isak said: ‘It’s gonna get dirty. The rug, like’.

‘Eva will lose her shit.’

‘Again,’ Elias chuckled and coughed, it was his turn. Now he has gone, up to take a piss in the woods, and Jonas’ left side is ice numb. On his right, there is Isak. Before they were down, Elias and Isak almost had a fight, because Elias said he didn’t like to be nice and cosy with – so Jonas said he would take the middle, and can they take care of the weed now, it was fucking freezing. It tires him. Why couldn’t Isak be friends with Elias, and Elias friends with Eva? Just be chill. They would, Jonas is watching the steam and the trees, and he feels it is the tension of his muscles, the electricity of his nerves, which is now curling, curling into the air, the frozen sky, the faraway disc of the sun misted over, they would live in a house. A house he, Jonas would build, because it has always been his dream. A house in a place like this, on a patch of grass, with woods and water near. He would build it himself: he would do the research, and he would choose the right materials for the foundations, for the walls, and he wouldn’t hire a company, and he wouldn’t use any machines, so the house would come to life as if by itself, as if it was always there, on the patch of grass. Once, he saw a documentary on sustainable residential constructions. All systems would be planned just so, to minimize the pollution, and the waste, and the – and the – he coughs on the smoke. And Eva would cook there, in a kitchen full of light, where there would be more space for him to stop by and kiss her, and dance, if he felt like it. And Isak would be there, in a room, and Elias too, in a room of his own, but Jonas and Eva would share. All day long he would play his guitar and sing – even Jason Mraz, if Isak asked – and Eva wouldn’t mind the weed, or the trivial pursuit – and she wouldn’t mind the FIFA, and – he hears a twig break, but then, louder:

‘Jonas.’ It is Isak, in a small and creaky voice. ‘But Eva, she is my friend – you know – but, like, is she –‘ Jonas lets it drift, like sea wave over the pebbles, over small and black shells, polished like buttons. ‘Is she the right fit for you? Like –‘

Where is Isak? On his right. Jonas considers it, whether to turn and face him. He doesn’t. There is wonder in this stillness, the stillness of a shell, over it a frozen sky. Break it, and there will be a flood. A flood on the house of his dreams. He would tell Isak, tell him: there will be a house, a dreaming house. No pollution, no shit. There will be a room for you. With a view for the sea. A room for you and your girlfriend, because Isak’s solitude will pass, like rain, like fever. No shit, no moods. He told Isak, when he was loud and high – he is high, he remembers – and Isak said: ‘Jonas, but Eva.’

‘The right fit,’ Jonas repeats. He and Eva will keep the bars of soap in the drawers with their clothes, fill the cupboards with the smell of honey and pine. ‘What, you’re saying – you’re saying she’s –‘, they will collect plates and mugs from their family and their friends, and on the flea markets, ‘She’s not? Smart enough, or-’

‘I –‘ Isak stops and Jonas blinks. The ground, he remembers, is hard. The air is cold. The house of his dreams curls away with the steam, and although dull mists weighs over the trees, all is sharp. The electricity shoots back, and shimmers under the skin. No, it’s a thunder he hears. It reverberates in the sky.

‘You’re not calling her an idiot,’ he says. ‘Come on.’

‘I’m –,’ Isak shifts next to him, his hair brushes Jonas’s ear. ‘I’m calling her Erna Solberg.’ A chuckle escapes, and Jonas realizes it is his, too.

‘You always rip on her, man.’

Isak shifts again.

‘We’re friends, though,’ he says, slow. You do, too, he doesn’t say. Isak never says it. Jonas closes his eyes and goes back to the house, a house on a patch of grass like here, but not here, a house somewhere else, where the light is a shade lighter and the sea a degree warmer. There would be puzzle in the living room, because although Jonas hasn’t put a puzzle together since the kindergarten, a house would be incomplete without a stack of these dusty boxes. With landscapes, with reproductions of familiar art pieces, with sleek racing cars. But he might take a box of puzzles – if he is high, like now, but not now – and take the pieces out, piece a shape. He would be in the centre, and there would be Isak and Eva. Elias up, to take a piss.

‘You’re my bro, it’s not the same,’ Isak goes on. Jonas nods. There is always a space between him and Isak, and Elias, where Eva will never be. Here, the rug. The steps of the porch, with a can of beer passed in secret, clammy from the sweat on their hands. The pit of the skate park, where they lie on a summer night, the tip of the joint like another star. The locker room. There is a bond between friends, easy like your gut, known like your oldest scar. Any girl is on the outside. Isak goes on. ‘And even if –‘ he takes a shaky breath, ‘wouldn’t you, like – if it was me – if I was – not smart – wouldn’t you tell me?’

‘Not – not smart, how?’

‘Just, shit.’

Isak is odd on highs. He won’t stop shifting next to Jonas. There always is a pebble in his shoe he would try to shake out, or an itch just above his shoulder-blade. He will slip into the high late, and he will giggle through his nose – with snorts he will try to hide, cough. Just before it, on the edge, Isak speaks in cut-off sentences, eyes half-closed. Jonas has asked if Isak is scared of the highs, and Isak laughed. He is. Jonas can tell. So, he pushes against Isak and knocks their arms together.

‘You’re not though.’ He raises his arm and reaches over, ruffles Isak’s hair. ‘Not – not smart. Not, not.’

‘Not, not,’ Isak repeats, and gives half a laugh. ‘But, for real?’

‘No. I mean, yeah.’ Jonas feels the words log. ‘Real – you’re real – really –‘ The word doesn’t slide off his tongue. Isak knows, though. Or it’s the weed, but he is there, easing on Jonas’ right. He breathes in and out, and there it comes, a giggle. He moves, so Jonas’ hand cups his head. It is too heavy on his fingers, and Isak’s hair is gross, but he doesn’t mind: the house-maker, the puzzle-piecer, a good friend he is, he doesn’t mind. He doesn’t mind Elias coming back and snickering, and he doesn’t mind Isak breaking apart with the speed of electricity, and he doesn’t mind the thunders, and the flood which follows. Not today and not tomorrow, but some day, he should ask Isak – he should ask – he should ask, why there always is a pebble in his shoe, whether Isak has been crossing a river, or crossing a sea. He should ask Isak to piece the puzzle between him and Eva. To build a house on a patch of grass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you don't take anything else from this fic, take this: when jonas gets high all he wants to do is to build a house for all his friends.
> 
> also, the kitchens are a recurring theme.


	2. an unknown scar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are mentions of food and food-making. mostly the first paragraph but not only.

The fridge is mostly empty but there is enough to make the runny noodles. He takes out a box of eggs and a carton of vegetable juice a day past its expiration date. There is flour in the top cupboard, the bag rolled down and kept in the shape with a blue elastic band. It takes him longer to find a bowl and a pot, and then to work out the mechanics of Valtersens’ ancient gas oven. He breaks the eggs over the edge of the bowl, carefully. He throws the shells into the bin, which is too full – he says: ‘To do, take the garbage out.’ He adds a pinch of salt and then the flour, spoon by spoon. More than less, he likes the noodles thick. The juice is boiling – shiny circles of olive shivering on the surface – so he pours the dough into it, rolling long strings of the yellow fluid on the fork, hoping it won’t stick to the bottom of the pot. He stirs it, stirs it again and switches the oven off, wary of its aged knobs. The bowl and the fork in the sink, he says: ‘To do, wash the appliances.’ He lifts the pot and, with a spoon in his mouth, takes a step out of the kitchen. Slowly, he turns to the stairs. The handles are sliding in his hands: there is sweat in the folds of his skin. From behind the last door in the corridor, a noise comes. He stops. There is a voice, singing. There are many voices. The tune is wailing. A mass, he decides, a mass on the radio and – a person, Mrs Valtersen – listening to the mass. The recording stutters, and he is sure the radio must be old, as old as the gas oven, as old as the sink. He shifts the pot to free a hand and opens the door. The door close to him, the door from behind which there is no voice.

Isak is where Jonas has left him, on a side of his bed with the gaze stuck to the ceiling. He hasn’t been crying when Jonas was gone. He hasn’t been crying since Friday, when Jonas came first. There was a voice message he didn’t understand: Isak was sobbing too hard for Jonas to make out the words, so he put on his shoes and grabbed a jacket, and left. On the street – he had put the wallet from the backpack into the pocket earlier, thank fuck – he bought a toothbrush and a bar of chocolate. He had tried going vegan last month – but Isak was crying – he bought real chocolate, with fat and milk. With a hard-beating heart, he ringed at the Valtersens’ door, ringed and ringed – then, he tried to open it, and it was open. Inside, there was silence. No wreckage. He came up to Isak’s room, and there Isak was. The light was out. Jonas approached the dark shape in the corner of Isak’s bed. The chocolate in his hand was melting. He wished he hadn’t bought it. He wished he had thrown it out to the bin in the kitchen below. ‘I brought a toothbrush,’ he said. ‘If you wanted me to stay.’ And then, he heard Isak cry.

Jonas puts the pot on the desk and wipes the spoon into his sweatshirt. Well, Isak’s sweatshirt. Although he brought a toothbrush, he had nothing else he needed for the three days of living in Isak’s room. He stirs the soup again to make sure no noodle has glued to the pot.

‘Check out this soup, man,’ he says and smiles. ‘It’s legit like shit.’

‘That’s right,’ Isak sighs. ‘Cause your cooking is shit.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Jonas breaks into full grin, because Isak is rising from the bed. It was pizza for the past two days – ordered to the door and brought by Jonas to Isak’s bed – but Jonas feels like pushing a little. Have Isak stretch his limbs, eat some home-made food. Even if it’s shitty carton juice soup. Isak won’t make it to the school tomorrow, but he might make it through the day with Jonas gone. He watches Isak take up the spoon – grimace at it – and eat.

‘Well,’ Isak says after a minute, ‘it’s not awful.’ He eyes a noodle. ‘But it is – I mean, don’t be a chef, bro.’

‘Never.’ It is a precious moment, Isak almost normal – just pale – so Jonas asks, ‘Do you want me to check on your mom?’ Isak freezes, the spoon suspended mid-air. He chews and swallows, and shakes his head. ‘She is listening to – like, a mass now, and –‘

‘I don’t care.’

‘Okay. Okay, I won’t.’ Isak’s grip on the spoon relaxes, his shoulders drop. Jonas is terrified. He comes from a family of puzzle boxes and runny noodles, that Isak might carry rage so heavy against his, it terrifies him. ‘So,’ he says. ‘You still have the guitar I left the other day?’

Isak’s head shoots up, eyes wide. Jonas keeps smiling. Isak shrugs.

‘I guess,’ he mutters into the spoon. ‘It could be, like –‘ he coughs. ‘At the back of my wardrobe? I, uh – I don’t know, it’s been – it takes up space, so I – like, moved it.’

‘Sweet,’ Jonas stands up. ‘Can I get it?’

‘Sure.’

He pushes the coats and the jumpers, ignores the stray magazine trapped under shoe boxes, and grabs the handle of his guitar. It throws him off the course – the sudden touch of an instrument he hasn’t played since the middle school. A birthday present from an uncle, a rugged black lady. He was in the age to put stickers on it, and he still recognizes a few. Kept in the dark, the colours didn’t wash off. There are some of his favourites, and the traces of his authoritarian obsession with blues: he spent a month of the second year deep in the roots, and said there was no truth in music made after sixties. Nobody cared, but Isak listened to these revelations with mouth open and eyes bright.

‘I found it,’ Jonas says and closes the wardrobe. Isak has pushed off the pot, and is now spinning lazily in the chair. His feet hit the desk, but it happens so slowly it can’t hurt. Jonas doesn’t know what to say to this. He sits on the floor in the line of Isak’s eyesight and back against his bed, pulls the strings. The sun is setting as he is tuning the guitar back. The rectangle of light, which has moved from the wall to the floor, next to Jonas’ knees, is now warm red. The room glows and blurs: the shape of Isak is softer, the edges lost, the pale face pinked. Jonas is playing a song he heard on the radio: it was playing on the bus they took to the cabin. Some pop crap. Eva liked it.

‘Eva came by yesterday.’ Isak’s feet hit the desk for real now, the chair stops and he scowls. ‘The fuck you did that for,’ Jonas laughs and Isak flips him off. He is holding his feet, head between his arms, when he says:

‘Must’ve been awkward. With you,’ he pauses. ‘Broken up.’

‘We’re not, like –‘ Jonas wonders. ‘We’re on a break, but – we’re gonna get together,’ it surprises him, that he says it and that he believes it. But he does. When he saw Eva yesterday – he almost took back all he said there, at the skate park. Fuck, he almost took it back just after he said it. He didn’t mean to. He never meant to. All he wanted to do, sometimes, was to see how much Eva would take. This was too much. Too much for anyone. He wasn’t insincere – only, he feels what he said to Eva was terribly true of all of them. Who are they and why do they do what they do? He doesn’t know why Eva hooks up with a third year scumbag as much as he doesn’t know why he listens to Elias, as much as he doesn’t know why Isak – why he is now examining his heel with such care, as if it wasn’t bruised, but a strange part of his body he has never seen before. ‘Hey, you –‘

‘How do you know?’

‘Hm,’ Jonas runs his fingers over the strings. ‘Just a feeling.’

‘Oh. Cool,’ Isak wipes his face with a sleeve. Jonas blinks, and in the last of the sunset light, he sees Isak’s face crumble – like an autumn apple, pink and wizened with a sob – and then, Isak is crying. He hasn’t, since Friday. Jonas pushes the guitar off his knees.

‘Hey,’ he says soft. ‘Hey.’

‘Sorry,’ Isak is looking away – hiding, Jonas realizes, his face with both of his hands. ‘I just – I just have no – no fucking clue – what’s – what’s gonna, so – to me, so – I don’t get to have – I’m happy for you, I’m-’

Then, Jonas is next to him. He doesn’t know what to do. Slowly, he closes his arms over Isak’s, hands flat on Isak’s back. Under his fingertips, Isak steels himself still. His face is against Jonas’s chest, the sweatshirt run through with his tears. Jonas is aware of every angle, the shape his hands make on Isak’s frame, the line between his chin and the top of Isak’s head, the space between Isak’s hands, balled into fists on his sides. Jonas hopes it is enough to lock Isak in, to have him warm and close, to be here. He doesn’t know how to trace circles on the shoulder-blades, or how to brush the hair off the forehead. He knows how to play a song on a guitar, and how to skip a stone on a lake so it never falls, and how to skate, and how to kiss a girl. He knows how to make runny noodles and how to piece a puzzle. He doesn’t know what to do here. He remembers the chocolate, which they had the first night: the sticky fingers, how he licked the chocolate off, how Isak glanced. He remembers the pebble. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to do. What to do, when a bond familiar like your oldest scar becomes unknown, as if it were a part strange to your body? Tomorrow, he will wash the appliances. Tomorrow, he will throw the garbage out. To do, he says in silence, ask Isak if he knows there’s gay porn under his shoeboxes. Now, he is still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kick isak while he's already down: a national norwegian sport (i'm not norwegian).
> 
> on that note, neither are the runny noodles. but perhaps hopeless teenage cuisine transcends borders.
> 
> also, i was worrying if a paper magazine isn't too anachronic, but i figured that since isak is a dumb teenager of scientific bent, he might've tried (by an empirical method) to see whether analogue porn has the same effect as digitial. maybe if it's on phone then it's not real? the results of the research he conducted were far from the satisfactory.


	3. a flying fish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more mentions of food! mostly third to last paragraph.
> 
> there's also isabell. not enough to get tagged, but some, so it would do to remember she was a character.

The light soaks the curtains and drips on Isabell, tipping the curls of her hair gold. She sleeps on her stomach, pillow half under her face and half under her breasts. Like a fish, slipping from her grip. He might say it when she wakes up, did you dream of catching the flying fish? It sure looked like it. No, he won’t say it. He won’t laugh. It’s the first time they slept together – not fucked, but slept. When she wakes up, he will be here and he will kiss her. He’s getting soft – Elias would laugh – but it’s not wrong, to lie here, and to watch Isabell sleep on a late April afternoon, and to dream of kissing her. They met at a party last winter: he was just shaking off the slumber of the break-up, and realizing he was barely sixteen, and Eva hadn’t been the love of his life, even if to leave her was like to drift against the gravity. He was seeing girls again – he was sixteen; they were hot – and it was fun: it was the first time in the last three years he had no girlfriend. He took it in the stride, went out in button-ups because it was mature, and went down on third year girls because it was cool, to know you could make them – elusive and almost not here, half-adult – sob, and then smile the next day with a smile like a see you again. It made him notorious for one bright week. Then, he met Isabell. She was hot, but not his type. The party was boring as fuck though, so he stuck to her. It was her voice, crooning low, which did it for him: he didn’t kiss her, just glanced at her – he knew the girls liked his eyes, and they liked his glances – and she shrugged, said: ‘Upstairs?’ The bedrooms were locked, but they didn’t care and took a window, Isabell on a window sill and Jonas between her legs. She was framed in the moonlight and he was blind. He was looking for her on the next party, and on the next. Isak asked what his problem was when they went to Ina’s, and he said: ‘Isabell isn’t here.’ Who the fuck was Isabell, Isak asked and Jonas didn’t understand the question. He and Isak were always together these days, like the first years of their friendship when they had been just two kids with scrapped knees, and Isak’s hand was now on his arm, fingers digging into the shirt, but Isak was laughing, as if it were a joke, who the fuck was Isabell: a joke, Jonas was supposed to say, but he said nothing. Isabell wasn’t a joke and she wasn’t just a girl. She wasn’t anything more, either – he was just looking. It was a text, in February. ‘I like you, but I need you to take it seriously or let go.’ They met, and then – well, now Isabell is here, golden-lit.

Just before they fell asleep pillow to pillow, Isabell raised her hand and touched the bruises on Jonas’s face. She outlined the marks of purple and blue; she followed the thin lines of old crusted blood. ‘Aren’t you a pacifist?’ she asked, and he kissed her. He was, but others weren’t. Isak wasn’t. When Isak saw him on his doorstep with a bloody nose and a missing tooth, his face stilled. He told Jonas to go to his room, and came there later, with an icepack and a new box of tissues. Jonas hadn’t made it to the chair and just slid down to the floor, his body heavy and his head not right. He couldn’t see right: there was Isak’s socked foot, and Isak’s hand with a tissue, and Isak’s eye, but if he tried to piece these together, it hurt. If there was an Isak who was a whole, he was hidden. ‘I will find them,’ it was Isak’s voice, close to Jonas’s ear, but not too close: there was no touch of his breath, no slide of his hair. Jonas doesn’t remember if he protested – he likes to believe he did – and he doesn’t remember if he asked Isak to take the picture – he likes to believe he didn’t. Ever since, Isak has been texting third years and graduates, collecting names, addresses, offenses. Jonas watched it silent: Isak curled on a window sill with a phone, face blank, a fight methodically planned, a possibility turned imminent inevitability. He wondered at Isak, who cut Eva off, who now deliberated how to hurt the largest number of people with the minimal effort and risk, he wondered: why did he do what he did? It isn’t right, he wonders now, it isn’t right that a friendship should inspire violence. A friendship should not be a scar, or a wound, it should not be a dark shrivelled mark you are afraid to touch. It should not be a secret, hid in a steel safe, or in a shoebox. Jonas should ask: the pebble, the magazine. He never does.

Tomorrow. He gets up – considers whether to give a sleeping Isabell a kiss or not, and decides against it – and goes into the living room, where Thea is lounging on the couch with a textbook ignored and the TV on. He will tell her off when he is done in the kitchen. He doesn’t go past pouring himself a glass of soy milk, when Thea says:

‘So, Isak stopped by. But like, I said you’re not home, cause –‘ she laughs. Jonas drinks the milk and puts the glass in the dish-washer. He wipes his chin with a paper towel. He doesn’t know why he is nervous, but he is. ‘Anyway. He had, like, a duffel bag? You guys had a sleepover in plans, or –‘

‘What did he look like?’ Jonas stand in the door. Thea glances away from the TV and turns a page in her textbook.

‘What did he – dunno, he wasn’t long –‘

‘But he was OK, right? He didn’t have –‘ Jonas doesn’t know what to ask. ‘Bruises or –‘ Thea now turns to him, with a furrow. ‘Nevermind, I’ll call him.’

He goes back to his room and checks the pockets in his jeans, in his jacket. Finds the phone in his sneaker. It slips from his hands and he swears, quiet – he chooses Isak, next to Isabell on the list of his contacts, and calls. The voice mail. If it were a piece of puzzle, or a maths problem: Isak comes here with a duffel bag and no bruises but Jonas is not home and Isak switches the phone off, what is the probability of – the probability of – why the duffel bag? He might have just – had a six-pack in it. He might have just gone to a party after a pre-game at a different place. It’s fine. What Jonas would do? He could grab a jacket, buy a chocolate bar and run, but he doesn’t know where Isak is, and the phone is switched off. If Jonas found him, he wouldn’t know what to do, what to say – other than ask: the pebble, the magazine, the duffel bag. If Jonas left, Isabell would be here alone.

He puts the phone on the bedstand. He picks it up and sends a text to Isak. He puts it back again, and goes to the kitchen. There is an avocado in the fridge: there are two avocados, a jar of pine honey and a smaller jar of chilli pesto, and a mix of salads in a plastic bag. He knows that in the cupboard there is box of brown pasta and next to it, a packet of medjool dates. He knows what to do here, in a bright kitchen with an electric cooker and a dish-washer, where he can hear the movie Thea is watching and the yawns of Isabell, who has just woken up. He is fine, and Isak is fine, and tomorrow he will ask, easy: ‘I heard you came by yesterday.’

But Isak will be still: he will be like a river in winter: you can see the currents underneath, the dark flora on a move, as shapes merely – blurred, the dull ice above. The ice should crack and the water should flood, and the delicate architecture of the underwater grass should be distinct in the sharp unmisted sun.

But the ice will hold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i decided jonas is vegan with an exception for kebab. 
> 
> also, he is a low key drama queen when it comes to people who like him & he has identity crises over their fuck-ups (see: eva, are you even a person: the convo). isak isn't a teen mafia mastermind, he's mostly bothering the fuck out of chris shithead. that's his surname, right?
> 
> ANYWAY i hope you enjoyed this weird fic, if you want to talk about characterization or yell at me about my abuse of comma and other punctuation marks, or anything else, i'm happy to talk here or on zielenna @ tumblr!


End file.
